Sunday, 19 October 2014

Update

A quick update from me since the last Digital Leaders
Training in September. I thoroughly
enjoyed the last training days and have enjoyed reading the contributions from others on the blog. There is certainly a lot of food for thought in terms of what and how we use the Internet in education and beyond.

Unfortunately I haven't made as much progress with my project as I would have liked to by this point. I am mainly going to blame the Chinese Embassy for causing me so many problems with student Visas for the trip to China I've organised for half-term. Add to that a forthcoming ESTYN Inspection and an impending house move, and it's fair to say that things are a bit hectic at the moment!

I have had some success with the first part of my project which was to get pupils to use CamStudio screen recording software to share with others the skills they had learned during a lesson. Most pupils have done this as part of a plenary session in which they evaluate their progress; some pupils have created recordings as an extension activity. Year 8 pupils are currently working on a spreadsheet modelling unit and have created recordings showing how to use skills such as adding formulas/functions, creating charts and conditional formatting. Year 10 pupils have recorded database skills such as creating queries, forms and reports.

Pupils in both classes have enjoyed being a part of the project so far. Many have told me that the knowledge 'sticks' better and they are able to recall skills better in following lessons. Other pupils really enjoy the fact that the resources they make will be accessed by others and as such take a lot of pride in what they produce.

The next stage of the project will be for pupils to add their recordings, plus written description/evaluation to a blog. It took CCBC longer than I had hoped to sort out access to 'the forbidden sites' through my account and I lot a bit of impetus early on. After half-term I hope that once pupils are fully using the blogs then there will be a benefit not only for the pupils creating the blogs but also from other pupils using the resources on these blogs as an educational tool themselves.